Category : Places
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Sun, sun and more sun
Oh! how I love this weather - suddenly feel so much younger and very, very silly *laughs*. Tim and I had to wash something outside earlier with the garden hose with the inevitable result of a bit of childish playing going on!
Rosie has gone to Abbotsbury today with grandma, grandpa and Luke so it was just me, Tim and April at home. This morning we went to Tesco and picked up some essentials (including sun lotion!) and not-essential-but-essential (if you see what I mean!) things like yummy egg custard tarts (which we thoroughly enjoyed for tea!). Also picked up April a preschool letter learning pack with sticker book, colouring book and wipe clean workbook. Was then astonished to see her sit down with the wipe clean book and trace over some letters almost perfectly! She has amazing pen control for a 3 year old! She also recognised a load of the letters and was matching them up to pictures. Anyway, here's her page of traced letters :)
Aprils also spent ages outside today playing with a bowl of water, painting and hunting for ants so she's a very happy little girl. She would spend ALL day outside if we let her - hmmmm, a great candidate for being shut up in school full time - NOT!
Tonight, Tim and I are going to relax with a bottle of VERY chilled white wine and Young Musician of the Year on telly. Perfect :)
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Need a massage
Very achey today (and no, that's not the slightly embarrassing painful problem I mentioned earlier!) - I think I must have slept awkwardly last night because I'm all stiff between the shoulder blades.
Well, after Tim got home from work and we'd had lunch and then took April for, what will be her last, Tumbletots session. 2 reasons - firstly, we've (finally!) decided to go ahead and put her in the Montessori school and secondly Tumbletots is, in fact, pants. It looks impressive when you first walk in there with all this fancy climbing equipment but it basically involves the kids queuing up to do the same circuit over and over again for 3 quarters of an hour. Meanwhile I (as I mentioned in a previous post) had to sit in a side room with all the other mums and listen to their endless drone about their kids (I think I must be a baaaaad mum coz I hate that stuff) This week the topic of conversation was milk teeth *yawn*.
Anyway, so that was that. Our decision to put April in the school a couple of sessions a week means that Tumbletots will be knocked on the head. She's only 3 and unlike a lot of parents I don't believe every second of every day has to be filled with activities and whatnot - she'd be cream crackered.
So, the school. There are OH! so many reasons for this - the main one being that she is just SO into everything all the time - she totally needs to be in an environment where she can do stuff that I cannot possibly do with her at home (AND try and home ed Rosie!) She had a fab time when we went to look round and she has no problem with being "left" so I reckon she'll love it. The other reason is me. I need a break - the age gap between them (nearly 8 years) makes trying to do stuff with both of them really hard. Rosie has (at most) 6 years of compulsory ed left (less than that if, in 3 years or so she decides to go to the Upper School) - the thought of starting all over again with April leaves me feeling a little giddy to be honest. I'm not saying we've ruled out home ed for her - just want to see how the school goes first.
Her sessions at the nursery will give me a whole afternoon ALONE. Unbelievable Wednesday afternoons will see Rosie and Tim at the Littledown Centre, April at nursery and me all on my own! Ooooo! what will I do? curl up on the sofa and read?, sit in the garden and soak up some sun? Whatever I do, it will be peace and quiet. Heaven! The only real time I get to myself at the mo is when Tim gets up early for work (he leaves around 4.45 in the morning) and the kids don't wake up for another couple hours or so, so I quite often get up and have tea, do some yoga or whatever - it's really nice "me" time but Wednesday afternoons are going to be the highlight of my week *smiles*.
All this stuff leaves me in a bit of a quandry about what to do with the Dorset home ed group stuff I was doing. To be honest, it's going to be a little redundant as Rosie's not fussed either way and is happy with her current activity level, April won't really need it so .... well, we'll see. Right now, at least for the next year or so, we're going to be a half home educating family and d'you know what? I'm actually really looking forward to a change of "scenery" and I think April will be much happier too *big grin* Happy bunnies all round!
Right, now I'm off to chill out - lovely evening here, very sunny and warm :)
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